This is not, quite, a book about whisky; not, quite, a book about Scotland; not, quite, a book about Iain Banks. It manages instead to combine the three in what any single-malt purist would regard as a glaring oxymoron, up there with 'compassionate conservatism' and 'family holiday': an accomplished blend.

It's also a book likely to provoke, in certain readers, vociferous fits of spit-out-loud jealousy. Banks was given the none-too-nasty brief of taking himself off around the distilleries of his native land for a few months, passing on the way through the most riveting landscapes in Britain, drinking lots of whisky with friends and getting paid for it all: it's testament to Banks's likeability that you will him on to the next place rather than wishing him dead in a ditch.

Nor is he too didactic, seeing the search as sociable fun rather than some wearily comprehensive last word on whisky. (He does, incidentally, find his perfect dram - which, quite unaccountably, isn't Caol Ila - but doesn't belabour the point and is vastly willing for you to find your own.)

He finds acres of space, in fact, in which to ignore whisky altogether. In less capable hands these digressions - on everything from Palm Pilots, midges and the infinite superiority of the long-wheelbase Land-Rover, to how to cope with being a Morton fan or how to go about inventing new planets - could have proved annoying, but Banks, with the instinct of a natural writer, knows just when to push on, and just when to stop. There are several genuinely and valuably angry passages, too, chronicling his thoughts as war against Iraq looms: they read like Bill Bryson with attitude, or Michael Moore with wit.

In the final judgment, it does what every good book should manage to do, and what a hundred other books on whisky (and a thousand other books on Scotland) have signally failed to do: makes you want to go for a drink with the author.